Monday, October 30, 2006

School Chaplains

One of the biggest news items for today (and yesterday arvo) was the Federal Government’s announcement of funding for school Chaplains. There are a couple of links for you below. It would be up to the school community to decide who the chaplains would be and of what faith, but an idea that was touted is that a number of schools get together and have one of each. (*side comment: I raised this with the old man this afternoon. He cut me short and said, “Fantastic. That means everyone can get to a Tridentine Rite priest, a Novus Ordo priest and a Ukrainian Rite priest for advice!” I think he missed the point...)

I think it’s generally a good idea to get some kind of religion back into schools as long as it’s not highjacked by the Left or the Uniting Church (I’m sure I heard spokeswomen for them against it on the grounds of perceived discrimination against Muslims and others). Crikey, some people are worried about relations with Church and State! Huh? Don't they understand...This kind of ignorance really annoys me.

The Australian Catholic Students Association put out a media release on it early this afternoon and I was interview on JJJ Radio at about 5.30pm. I think it went okay and must have as an angry woman called the station afterwards saying that her sons were ‘pagan’ and she didn’t want them discriminated against!! We’ll see what happens tomorrow with the story.

Chaplains plan safe from extremists
Howard Defends Chaplain Scheme Proposal
Carr Condemns School Chaplains

Update: CathNews' piece. Pell cautiously welcomes school chaplains plan

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Go you dude! That's awesome! On the radio nice one! I too was on the radio - BBC five live talking about some Catholic stuff. And I too am 21 years old. How cool is that!? Ok maybe it's just me that gets excited about that, anyway nice blog!!!

Anonymous said...

Hmmmm. I think the main reason for the separation of Church and State is to keep the State out of Church business!

I'm not entirely against the idea, but in my experience, every time Caesar gives the church $ for its services, the Church ends up compromised.

That said, I would love to see chaplains in every school.